"These headphones/speakers sound better with more juice/current"??

[ZolaIII]

@Cbdb2 huhuh OK it's much more complicated and I did gave confusing explanation at first for which I am to blame entirely. I shouldn't do it in the 2 A. M, better yet never (but I ain't that bright). Well what if I am fighting Ohm's low (not really of course)? And amplifier along with any other electric/digital device is. Mind you that's the fight you can not win. Did you ever hear about the term semiconductor leakage, sustainable leakage, exponential increase of leakage? You see amplifier (even your modern digital advanced lithography stuff SoC's, CPU's, GPU's... pretty much everything) works increasing voltage as much as it needs more power to deliver to the point it's permitted as sustainable limit. Transistor will demand more voltage as driving impedance goes up it will do it with voltage rail usually in order of 2x (more rails more times it can do it) and when it can't anymore it will came to voltage collapse hard clipping if you wish. Now it's important for you and others to understand how rail switching is relatively slow so when the impedance drops sharply it will try to retain the voltage and increase Amperage. Now things begin to happen as on higher voltage with higher amperage it will produce more heat as he can't drain that much anymore. As the heat increase also does the impedance, leakage becomes unsustainable and one of many safety mechanisms jumps in to shut it down. I won't even try to explain thermodynamics, diffusity nor dumping factor coefficients in details or scientifically. However who wants to brake his head I won't stop him.

Choice of damping coefficient in Langevin dynamics - The European Physical Journal B

Abstract This article considers the application of Langevin dynamics to sampling and investigates how to choose the damping parameter in Langevin dynamics for the purpose of maximizing thoroughness of sampling. Also, it considers the computation of measures of sampling thoroughness. Graphic abstract

link.springer.com

I understand, appreciate and use undervolting benifits along with minimum sustainable voltage and believe me OEM's don't really do a good job regarding optimising it.

Now if you will excuse me I have some serious shit going on right now in my personal life which are far more important than any bulshit including this one.
Have a nice day.

 

[solderdude]

OP asked about power levels of an IEM he uses (in the few mW range at most and max 2V)
Also about his HD6XX which also does not require more than 100mW peak or so and max 10V.
That is milliwatt... not Megawatt.
Regarding speaker amps. The things you bring to the table are at best things that designers have to take into considerations and are all completely irrelevant for consumers and also for the question the OP asked (when they would be about speaker amps)

Besides... I cannot understand any of your reasoning nor why you drag completely irrelevant aspects into this thread. This is not helping anyone and certainly not the O.P.

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

You need more power than USB provides to drive RCA, or headphones let alone balanced outputs.

Unless it's USB-C.
That can easily provide enough wattage for any headphone audio interface.

 

[ZolaIII]

OP asked about power levels of an IEM he uses (in the few mW range at most and max 2V)
Also about his HD6XX which also does not require more than 100mW peak or so and max 10V.
That is milliwatt... not Megawatt.
Regarding speaker amps. The things you bring to the table are at best things that designers have to take into considerations and are all completely irrelevant for consumers and also for the question the OP asked (when they would be about speaker amps)

Besides... I cannot understand any of your reasoning nor why you drag completely irrelevant aspects into this thread. This is not helping anyone and certainly not the O.P.

I am a different kind of consumer who doesn't have a problem with your understanding issue. Even a 100 mV decrease on the base of 1V can have a huge impact on things that can suck 200 W or more and with a basic voltage step as small as 6 mV. Crucial part to understand is sustainable leakage.
I do respect and appreciate your work regarding headaphones and mods but really whosent kidding regarding my situation earlier and I senserly hope you can understand and respect that much.
Best regards and have a nice one.

 

[solderdude]

All you wrote, again, has nothing to do with the question the OP asked.

 

[Spkrdctr]

Regarding speaker amps. The things you bring to the table are at best things that designers have to take into considerations and are all completely irrelevant for consumers and also for the question the OP asked (when they would be about speaker amps)

Besides... I cannot understand any of your reasoning nor why you drag completely irrelevant aspects into this thread. This is not helping anyone and certainly not the O.P.

Yea! It happens in just about every single thread. Thread drift. thread jacking. and talking about inaudible stuff. Great for engineers, but for consumers? It doesn't matter, you can only buy what is for sale, the consumer has no control over how a product is designed and made. Solderdude thanks for mentioning the elephant in the room in most threads.

 

[Cbdb2]

Yea, word salad with no point. This is a waste of time.

 

[garbulky]

Well...technically amplifiers shouldn't sound different at the same power. But... I have a very powerful amplifier, the Bas-X A-100 for headphones running in direct mode. And the HD600 sounds noticeably different through it and better vs all my other amplifiers. Note that this is subjective with no double blind level matched tests.

 

[Nango]

......anyway it is still true (or not?) that dynamics benefit from huge Vs while planars benefit from huge amount of current ...... right??

 

[solderdude]

Well...technically amplifiers shouldn't sound different at the same power. But... I have a very powerful amplifier, the Bas-X A-100 for headphones running in direct mode. And the HD600 sounds noticeably different through it and better vs all my other amplifiers.

HD600... plays at 100dB with just 1mW.... (0.001W) you just have 1.2W of unused headroom (assuming you sometimes reach 100mW (120dB) peaks).

Note that this is subjective

noted.
ASR does not stand for ... All Subjective Rumours

 

[garbulky]

HD600... plays at 100dB with just 1mW.... (0.001W) you just have 1.2W of unused headroom (assuming you sometimes reach 100mW (120dB) peaks).

noted.
ASR does not stand for ... All Subjective Rumours

I hear ya on the amps. I also don't understand it. I don't listen anywhere near 100 db. My listening levels are in the low 70 dbs. 95 db + immediately makes me uncomfortable. And I can make the HD600 distort at these volumes (but not that high) while my Bas-X A-100 doesn't exhibit clipping at this lower volume. (This was tested without the eqs ). I've been able to make amplifers that have been measured at 1 2 watts at 32 ohms actually distort with 32 ohm headphones. Could it be that there's different sensitivities throughout the ranges and you need an amplifier that is able to be stable with impedance swings? On the other hand I've listened to bluetooth earbuds that sound very loud with what must be miniscule inbuilt amplification. So I don't know.
These are the amplifiers I have tried. Xenos 3HA. Xonar Essence ST. Emotiva DC-1. Emotiva XDA-2 (lower power about 11 milliwatts @300 ohms with my HD600 and I very easily made it lose composure and distort). Mcintosh Tube preamp. LH Labs Geek (has upgraded amp) and A-100. I was only able to not distort the LH Labs and the Bas-x A-100 which are both very powerful.
Having said that your eq for my HD800S is still running well and sounds incredible!

 

[fire]

@solderdude yes he is but they didn't ment current as strength (A) and neither did I (V*A=W). And still operational difrence between voltage amplifier and power amplifier neads to be understood (I get it).

Output impedance has nothing to do with output power.

You don't drive audio source with constant power (requiring more voltage when impedance increases), but with constant voltage (leading to lower power at higher impedance). Audio power of speaker is not dependent on power, but on voltage. Trying to run at constant power would lead to abysmal frequency response due to resonant frequencies (=more impedance, less power) in the speaker.

 

[ZolaIII]

As I soft clipped regarding the topic long time ago I am hard clipping it now I don't care what you don't understand nor if you do. @fire read post #41 which describes it more detail but still rather simplified than it really is.

 

[fire]

I understand what a damping factor is just fine. Just don't understand what it has to do with anything about this power = voltage * current thing. Lots of fancy words though.

 

[muslhead]

As I soft clipped regarding the topic long time ago I am hard clipping it now I don't care what you don't understand nor if you do. @fire read post #41 which describes it more detail but still rather simplified than it really is.

Youve derailed the thread. Can you take this elsewhere?

 

[ZolaIII]

I understand what a damping factor is just fine. Just don't understand what it has to do with anything about this power = voltage * current thing. Lots of fancy words though.

Go read a bit about diffusity as simple explained as you can find it will explain to you how pressure (impedance) accumulates (with heat).
@muslhead I don't share your opinion but if you read the post you quoted in a funny way it tells how that's exactly what I intended to do. However you reserve the right not to agree and after all this place has a great administration.
Good night regarding me.

 

[muslhead]

this place has a great administration.

not as good as it needs because you are still posting

 

[Soandso]

I recall reading amplifiers can be designed for high current capability and this is a more expensive design, so not standard. And thus, just looking at the back plate of an amplifier's stated Wattage into 4 or 8 Ohm rated speakers doesn't reveal everything about it's voltage:current ratio of performance.

Upthread (comment #32) I followed a link to Legendary Audio's (Ben Blish) "Damping Factor" where in 2001 wrote that: low resistance speakers can "...support higher current ...[& that] ... means ... amplifier can control them better. However, most amplifiers generate more distortion when they produce more current."

According to that writer an "... amplifier ... must ... supply ... current and not change the applied voltage ... f voltage changes in the process distortion is the result."

Which, to me, seems to indicate that current delivery in the context of each milli-second of voltage generated musical sound frequency is what allows for "better" sounding headphones. And, as that writer put it, low resistance speakers can "... support higher current..." Which I extrapolate as including what seem to be mostly low Ohm rated iem types of headphones.

EDIT: Sorry - all those later italics were unintentional & my formatting mistake

 

[jasonhanjk]

Headphones requiring more juice to sound better are normally low sensitivity and low impedance, which will stress the hp amp; causing higher distortion.
HP amp are not made the same, commercial available hp amp IC drives 300 ohm better than 32 ohm.
Take example NJM4556, it can drive 300 ohm to 0.0002% THD+N but 32 ohm increases to 0.00X% with the same 5mW power.
Their respective current are 4mA vs 12.5mA.

Include are the 2 graph of the mentioned devices. Mojo can drive better than Qudelix.
However Mojo is just a fine amp as it fails to go below -100dB THD+N before 1mW.
Failing to get this achievement is a no no for IEM.
There are other excellent amp that cost about $50 which I highly recommend.

600mW for 30 ohms are just marketing gimmick, normal music listening are less than 1mW power.

 

[solderdude]

Could it be that there's different sensitivities throughout the ranges and you need an amplifier that is able to be stable with impedance swings?

The higher the impedance swings are (HD800 for instance) the easier it is to drive that headphone and less 'power' (or should I say current) is needed.
That said, the higher the impedance swing is the more counter EMF there is (but for high impedance headphones that EMF current is still much lower than the current needed at 1kHz for instance. It just flows in the opposite direction.

These are the amplifiers I have tried. Xenos 3HA. Xonar Essence ST. Emotiva DC-1. Emotiva XDA-2 (lower power about 11 milliwatts @300 ohms with my HD600 and I very easily made it lose composure and distort).

11mW in 300ohm is easy to clip when you apply some EQ and play it a bit louder (nearing impressive levels). For HD600/800 etc I would say 100mW - 300mW range is needed to handle all situations.